1. Field
The invention is a method and system for providing location based presence status and enhancing location privacy management in mobile, social networking and instant messaging environments.
2. Description of the Related Art
Location based services (LBS) have been on the wireless carrier product roadmaps for several years, however there has been limited mainstream adoption of such services, and much of the infrastructure and systems have been put in place to meet the emergency services (E-911) mandates.
With the advancements in Global Positioning System (GPS) technology for mobile devices, the accuracy of mobile positioning systems has improved significantly, and consumer LBS applications such as real-time navigation using mobile devices are now available on selected mobile devices offered by carriers. However, both carriers and consumers are concerned about consumer privacy and liability issues involved with offering and enabling such applications.
A significant percentage of mobile phones sold today are enabled with a GPS chip, which can determine the precise location of the user. While users are given the ability to turn off location tracking on their mobile devices for all location based applications with the exception of E-911 services, this results in the user not being able to take advantage of any location based services.
Location based presence, messaging and mobile social networking applications require users to share their location coordinates, however due to privacy concerns many users don't take advantage of such services. Some of the location based applications offer ability to share location coordinates by user or a group of users, and/or restrict sharing location information at the city or zip code level. However, in order to convey location information related to a subscriber's presence at a precise and specific location, such as the subscriber's home or work, or a business or point of interest, the subscriber has to share their location coordinates or address information with other users and/or applications.
Further, the process of updating presence status with other users in a mobile instant messaging environment imposes additional challenges compared to the desktop instant messaging environment. Particularly, due to the battery, memory, processing and screen size limitations of the mobile devices, current mobile instant messaging applications drain the battery of the mobile device in the process of sending real time updates of the presence information of the entire buddy list.
Also, several mobile location-based and social networking applications require a mapping interface to display the mobile user's location. Due to bandwidth constraints of the mobile network, and the memory, processing capability and battery limitations of the mobile device, delivering mapping information on mobile networks adds additional costs and complexity limiting the adoption of such applications.